


Sleeping Arrangements

by 1derspark



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (Nicky has some things to work through), (kinda), Angst, Burnings, Fluff, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Religion, Slow Burn, Smut, Spanish Inquisition, The Black Death, trying for historical accuracy probably getting historical "okayness"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1derspark/pseuds/1derspark
Summary: That is not to say he isn’t afraid, there is still so much he does not understand about himself and Yusuf and God, the way his skin knits itself back together. Why is ithimthat is gifted such a thing when there were better men out there who deserved it?Here, tied to Yusuf in a dirty cell, yet stuck in a pleasant and comforting half-sleep, he is of the mind that maybethisis why. God wants him to spend eternity with this man, chasing raiders off from villages, and in the night curling around each other barely touching but loving one another just the same. Waiting until the day Nicolo finally gathers the courage to touch his companion purposefully and then maybe at that moment, mankind discovers heaven.(Or the many ways in which Joe and Nicky sleep over the centuries.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 117
Kudos: 1326





	Sleeping Arrangements

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to another piece that I wrote instead of doing what I was actually supposed to be writing. And there's 11k of it. Whoohoo.
> 
> So this is inspired by that one post on tumblr that talks about Nicky sleeping in front because so may people have tried taking Joe away from him in his sleep over the years. Well, its snowballed into this. I do not know how.
> 
> Also apparently I like writing Nicky drunk and having him and Joe be on balconies all the time? 
> 
> A head's up for graphic violence in this one, there's a scene towards the end of the piece that's quite traumatic for both Joe and Nicky tied into the Spanish Inquisition and the consequent violence included with it. There is fire involved. If you want to skip over that, skip the section titled SPAIN 1480. There is also a brief moment earlier on where Nicky thinks about a possible non-con situation, but it's nothing graphic or explicit, very vague. 
> 
> Anyway, this is not betaed so any mistakes are mine. I tried for historical accuracy I really did, but I am alas not a historian and I'm certain I got some things wrong, hence the historical "okayness". 
> 
> Enjoy guys!

**DESERT OF JUDAH 1099**

  
  


They have decided to walk until the desert meets the sea.

This was the first thing that Nicolo and the man, Arab, Turk, demon _(no, his name is Yusuf)_ agreed upon besides plunging swords repeatedly into one another’s guts. 

It was hard for Nicolo to stop doing so. Their daily deadly dance, conducted outside the walls of Jerusalem, the inner alleyways, the open-aired markets. Clashing swords in front of the many churches and mosques and temples that the city boasted.

(And how ironic it was, that the two of them, a Christian priest and a Muslim merchant who were cursed to die upon the stoops of the many houses of worship Jerusalem had to offer. The city did not care for religion, it was the people who did.)

It would have been so much easier to keep up their endless fight until the end of the world, until even Jerusalem eternal as she seemed, was bone and dust; and then they’d only be fighting for the rush of it, the unexplained ache that came with their murders. Anger and rage and confusion were so much easier emotions to bear, in that they drove you and did not require much thinking. 

It was braver to say “stop” and be done with these emotions. To say “enough with the fighting”. Nicolo will admit Yusuf is the braver one. Who even after Nicolo bashed his head in with a rock, half sobbing, half-cursing ( _What are you? What are you? God why do you test me with a man whose eyes light up when I strike him.)_ stood up from the dirt, blood in the black ruin of his hair, and in choppy Genoese said, “Let us take a drink together Christian.”

They drank heavily from one of the secret wells Yusuf knew had not been poisoned for the Christian’s coming. Hidden in a sturdy protected alcove of the city, they’d hoarded sweet mouthfuls of water onto their tongues eyeing one another warily from across the stones, but there was something of a relief there too.

The desert was not sweet.

The desert was a burning, itching, hellish ruin. Nicolo has been to only two other places in the world. Genova where he was born, and for a brief moment Messina, perched on the rocky extension of Sicily where he stood on a crate and blessed crusaders. Before they too would be hustled onto a boat and into the Mediterannean to a land they knew nothing of but that God might be there.

These places waxed and waned with the seasons. Here the sand is always sand. Always hot. And they needed to find a place to rest or again Nicolo will die of thirst.

When he’d filled his waterskin and followed Yusuf’s pointed finger East over the rocky yellow outcrop maybe a week or two ago, he underestimated how quickly a man in a desert can run out of water.

He had not been in the desert long before he’d sacked Jerusalem with the rest of his countrymen. The Genoese arrived later to it all with their ships and reinforcements, after the sacking of Antioch. Nicolo was spared the extra anguish and hunger and disease the crusaders before him witnessed. He did not know what it meant to die with your mouth turned to gritty sand as well as your stomach.

Yusuf was better at rationing his water, but he soon too ran out. Faster when he saw that Nicolo’s storage was empty. 

He is kind, this man, Nicolo comes to realize. Very kind. Yusuf, who held the tip of the waterskin to a Christian’s lips and did nothing more than cock his head, curious, when Nicolo growled at him for coming too close. 

Still, they die of thirst a couple of times.

Nicolo tries not to dwell on the coming back part. Waking up from his many deaths, body unblemished, like he’s been born again, given a new body. But at least he is not alone in this phenomenon. 

He must collapse sometime before the sun goes down because he wakes laid down in the sand, his back propped up against what may have been a pillar once upon a time. Shaved down to a smooth sandstone by the elements. It’s chilly in the only way a desert gets at night, the hills of sand and rock lit blue in the light of the moon. It’s ethereal, Nicolo thinks maybe this is his special kind of purgatory until there is a splashing noise and to his surprise, Nicolo sees before him a water well.

In the tired slit of his waking eyes, Nicolo watches Yusuf crouched by the well, washing out the outer layer of his armor with brackish colored water. He’s stripped-down only to the soft linen of his underclothes. 

He is stained with blood and sweat and who knows what else, but as Nicolo watches him in the moonlight, bare as Nicolo’s ever seen him, Nicolo has to swallow even as his throat burns with the pain of it.

Yusuf looks up at him and Nicolo wishes he was asleep again. Dead. There in the pit of his stomach, something cries out. Something Nicolo has pushed down and down and down since he was old enough to look at a man and _wonder._

He is a priest. He knows better. But here comes God who’s delivered him a man more furious, more beautiful than any other he may have taken a shameful glance at in dark alleyways. 

“Here,” Yusuf says walking over to him with water in his hands. He kneels to Nicolo’s side, arms outstretched but he does not move until Nicolo nods. 

And then he is sipping water from the gentle calloused hands of his tormentor, of his salvation. Yusuf is water in the desert. Yusuf is rain on sand.

When Nicolo pulls back his lips are tingling, his head feels like it's stuffed with wool. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut and pushes back into the hard stony reminder at his back. He pushes until it's painful until he is sure his back is scraped and bleeding. 

He _cannot._ He _cannot,_ he _cannot,_ he _cannot._ This is wrong. But when Yusuf slides down to his side, just far away enough that they’re not touching, but close enough that Nicolo can feel his heat, Nicolo thinks of the many piled-up corpses they passed on their way out of Jerusalem. How many were women and children. Old men with canes. Men with dreams. Men who begged and pleaded and God struck them down anyway through the longsword of a crusader, snarling obscenities behind the cowl of their helm.

He thinks for the first time, maybe God is wrong.

“We should sleep,” Yusuf says. His Genoese is good, and Nicolo wonders if maybe they’d caught a glimpse of each other years ago when Yusuf was at port selling his wares. “I saw a seabird earlier. We are not far now.”

“You are sure?” Nicolo asks.

“No.” There’s something of a teasing smile on Yusuf’s face. “But I have nothing else to tempt you with.”

“I don’t need tempting,” he says sharply. “I can get there just fine.”

“I know. But I’d rather you not bitch at me the whole way there.”

“I will do no such thing,” Nicolo hisses. He turns over so that he’s facing away from Yusuf, snug down in the concave of sand up against the pillar. 

He hears Yusuf snort but the man says no more. No doubt, a week ago, they’d have had their swords at each other's throat by now, but time it seems has tempered their more violent urges. The distance from a smoking, wretched, holy city probably helps too.

Just as Nicolo is on the edge of sleep Yusuf shifts so that they are laying back to back. Together they are stretched out opposite in the sand, each facing a different horizon, keeping watch, keeping faith that in the night there will be no more slit throats between them.

  
  


**THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA 1109**

  
  


Nicolo has had his face teeth kicked in for the third time in the last twelve hours and he is fucking sick of it.

He spits out a tooth onto the salt-water stained wood on the ship’s floor, watches the little white thing roll about with the storm.

Then he looks up to the Norseman with a mouth-bloodied and grins, the replacement already growing back in.

The man, who is quite possibly the largest human being Nicolo has ever seen in his life, with shoulders like the branches of an oak tree, thighs muscled like a stallion’s, his hair tied back in a long and surprisingly intricate beaded braid barks out something foul in the Norse tongue. 

Nicolo has had the phrase spit at him more than once since their capture. He assumes it means something along the lines of “shut your fucking mouth” but his Norse is horrible, and Yusuf’s isn’t much better.

“ _Stop it,”_ Yusuf is spitting repeatedly from the cell over, panicked fury dripping into each word. Nicolo’s not too sure if he’s speaking to the Norseman for kicking him or to Nicolo for provoking the man. Either way, their situation is starting to look dire.

He and Yusuf have traveled together for a decade. In that time they have been stabbed and sliced and on one memorable occasion that still wakes Nicolo in the night, dragged from the behind of a galloping stallion. 

Yusuf cut the rider into many tiny pieces once he had Nicolo’s body freed.

They have not separated from one another, as Nicolo thought they might have done ten years ago when they finally reached the sea after what seemed to be an eternity in the desert. 

Faced with the endless expanse of water filled with more European ships than Yusuf was clearly comfortable with Nicolo had said, “I do not think I can go home.”

And he really hadn’t thought he could. Step back onto one of those ships with the mortal men, act like one of them, revel in their cheer and retellings of spearing Arabs on the edges of their blades. Not when he’d walked with one across the desert and licked up water from the kindness of his palms.

“Shall we walk then?” Yusuf had said.

“No.” There on one of the hills was a makeshift paddock and a couple of strong horses. “Never again will we walk through a desert.”

_Never again can I let you that close._

A pair of stolen horses later and they’d begun what would be the beginning of a ten-year journey, a lifelong journey. Though Nicolo was loath to admit it at the time. For that decade they explored every corner of the Mediterranean, and her many water kissed territories. Walking high into the mountains until they were too afraid of what might come out of them, then running back to the water where the port cities awaited. 

They spent half a year in Alexandria where Nicolo watched Yusuf sketch the formation lines of ships in the harbor at dusk. Two short months in Rome, overwhelmed by the dust and the people and the crumbling remains of the old Republic haunting the city like a ghost. They’d spent two years in the hills of the Byzantine beyond what was once (and will be) Greece, where it seemed all they ate were tangy olives and sugared figs, something sweet forming between them both. Good times where it seemed that all Nicolo did was smile, bad times when he fell to his knees in the knight, his hands clasped tight in prayer, his sword only moments away from Yusuf’s throat. 

Whatever they were, he held tight to those times now, tied down in the belly of a Norse pillaging ship.

Just before their capture, they’d found themselves back in Africa, a part of the Maghreb, to Yusuf’s great amusement. But they were more West this time, far from the Crusader states the Christians have made. Here neither the Christians nor the Fatimids had power, the land was instead held by a Berber people who as rulers remained chiefly tolerant, a distant governing force, especially for the fishing towns on the lip of the sea.

He and Yusuf had been there for a month, chasing away a band of noisy bandits, more boys than men, who were harassing the local towns for money and goods they could not spare.

It was easy work, and not much blood was spilled. Until the Norsemen came and set it all to hell.

Nicolo has heard of the raping and pillaging they do. Back in Italy, they spoke of these men in half-prayer. Demons with faces like snow stained in blood, hulking and huge and moving inhumanely fast, gobbling up the riches of the cities of Europe with no challenger of meeting them, at least on the water. He’s heard of how they pluck waif-thin maidens out of the sea bluffs like foxes do chickens, sly and greedy.

When he’d watched the Norsemen land on the shores of their idyllic Maghreb fishing town, he did not disagree. But the Italians left out one thing.

With the rate that the Norsemen snatch boys, as well as women for pleasure, Nicolo thinks that they do not care much for the distinction between sexes.

Luckily they have not put Nicolo or Yusuf to use on that front.

But he’s sure it will not be long.

“Nicolo,” Yusuf is whispering. They’re separated from each other by an iron gate between the cells. Their hands and feet are bound with thick rope, they cannot stand, only shuffle and squirm about on the floor.

“Nicolo, come to me.” He’s speaking Arabic, no doubt for Nicolo to practice. He’s gotten much better but he can hold no candle to the speed at which Yusuf picks up tongues and speaks them. “Nicolo please.”

“I’m alright,” Nicolo says, spitting a glob of blood out with a growl. He’s stuck in a strange half-sitting, half-laid down position, his head hangs close to the floor and all he wants to do is collapse onto it. If he goes to Yusuf he might cry when they touch, even at the barest brush of their backs. He cannot take comfort in that.

“I know,” Yusuf says. “But I want to check you anyway come here.” 

Nicolo takes too long to respond because he does not want to go and clasp their bound hands together through the bars. But Yusuf asks again and his voice wavers on the “please” so Nicolo groans and rolls over to the bars, somehow righting himself up so that they are sitting back to back. And when Yusuf reaches a finger through the gap to brush against his own he has to fight not to fall away.

Ten years together and Nicolo still cannot let the man touch him lest he crumble into pieces. 

(He thinks of the times that they have. A hand on his shoulder steering him out of the way of a horse cart, an accidental tap of their fingers when they wash their clothes of filth in a small river, how Yusuf almost touches with his _eyes,_ dark and fathomless across a campfire. 

He’s an artist, Nicolo knows. He’s seen the hidden caches of bound yellow-gray paper pamphlets Yusuf keeps in his saddlebags. How every time he’s looked the pages have been filled with smudged sketches of Nicolo. Nicolo. Nicolo. Nicolo.)

They have one hand clasped together now, the one warm point between them in the damp underbelly of this ship. 

Nicolo must have lost more blood than he thought, he has to fight to stay awake, his head bobbing as he fights to stay conscious. The exhaustion and fear have caught up with him. He does not want to be here. He is afraid of the Norsemen and what they will do once they tire of the poor souls they’re keeping up on the higher deck, but what he is most afraid of is them doing it to _Yusuf._

“Nicolo, stay awake Nicolo.”

“I’m fine,” he slurs. “You worry too much.”

“I worry enough with you sitting here and smirking at short-tempered Norsemen. You’re a fool Nicolo, a right fool.”

“Yes,” Nicolo says, teetering on what he hopes is the edge of sleep and not another resurrection. “But I am your fool no?”

Nicolo is under before he can hear Yusuf’s response. He sleeps in fitful if rejuvenating increments, broken only by the shifting of hands by his partner. He feels tethered and warm, in a way that he only ever has over the past ten years. That is not to say he isn’t afraid, there is still so much he does not understand about himself and Yusuf and God, the way his skin knits itself back together. Why is it _him_ that is gifted such a thing when there were better men out there who deserved it?

Here, tied to Yusuf in a dirty cell, yet stuck in a pleasant and comforting half-sleep, he is of the mind that maybe _this_ is why. God wants him to spend eternity with this man, chasing raiders off from villages, and in the night curling around each other barely touching but loving one another just the same. Waiting until the day Nicolo finally gathers the courage to touch his companion purposefully and then maybe at that moment, mankind discovers heaven. 

Suddenly he is awake, and he realizes it is because he has lost Yusuf’s touch. He flails and falls forward, panicking.

_Dio, perdonami, ti prego, perdonami, ho rinunciato al tuo dono, ho lasciato che lo prendessero—_

“Peace, Nicolo, peace.” There is a hand on his shoulder, sturdy. Which is strange because Yusuf cannot possibly reach that far through the bars… 

Nicolo’s arms are free. He turns and there is Yusuf, crouching in the shadows of his cell, a hand-stretched outwards through the bars in comfort. 

“You are freed,” Nicolo says, which is kind of stupid because clearly the man has untied himself.

Yusuf smiles, hearing the question in it anyway. He shows his other hand which Nicolo immediately notices is black with slick fresh blood, but Yusuf is clutching what looks like some shattered piece of pottery. Sharp enough to cut through bindings.

“Oh,” Nicolo says dumbly. 

“I free you and all you have to say is “oh”?” Yusuf says, but his eyes are twinkling.

Nicolo cannot say what he was thinking. He doesn’t know how to put that kind of panic into words so instead, he says, “I am still bound.”

“Ah well.” Yusuf crouches down even lower and makes a beckoning hand to Nicolo. “Come closer and we’ll fix that. I think we have business upstairs to attend to.”

  
  


**13TH CENTURY FRANCE**

  
  


It is sometime in the early 13th century when Nicolo says to himself, _enough_ , and lets Yusuf come to him in the night, lust and what he hopes is love on his mind.

They’re running. France is at war with the holy land. And England and Italy and all of Christendom have deemed itself fit to fight another war against the Caliphate for a piece of grainy rock of which they know nothing of, or have little claim over.

There was a second crusade. And now there is a third. Led by the English king Richard who the peasants whisper of in the grain fields. _Coeur-de-lion. Coeur-de-lion._ Lionheart. He is more French than he is English Nicolo hears, he does not even speak the Isles’ language, but he has the eyes and hearts of Europe nonetheless, who sing him praises and gather swords and men for his cause.

Nicolo will not be going back there again, handsome English king or no. 

So they hide in the barn belonging to a liege-lord, who’s men have paraded about the village calling for arms, for any able man or boy who can hold and swing a sword to take passage to Jerusalem. 

(What they do not say is that Jerusalem is not yet had, and never will be in this crusade by Europe’s hand. The Sultan Saladin who leads an army of Egyptians and Kurds just as fierce, is a man of equal importance and equal strength to the lion, does not yield. Though eventually, the two monarchs do come to a tentative peace, which is more than any other leader of the world can say.)

There has been more than a couple of scuffles between mothers and sons, husbands and wives in the village, who are not exactly inclined to leave their home for somewhere so foreign and far, all sins forgiven or not.

And while Nicolo and Yusuf have done their best saving a few of those men from that unwanted fate, it’s put a target on their own backs and now they are the ones in danger.

They’ve hidden themselves in the stalls of draft horses long dead, sold by the lord years ago to pay what Nicolo hears is a rather nasty gambling habit. 

He and Yusuf have been sleeping in rotations, but there’s no real rest had between them. The air is charged and heavy with their apprehension. They startle awake at every distant horse’s cry, every shout, every long peal of laughter. 

There is a moment where a ruckus of horse hooves circle about the barn and Nicolo has to hold in his breath, for fear that they hear his inhales, the shaky beat of his heart. 

And that is when Yusuf pulls him in. He shuffles to Nicolo in the hay and without a word draws him into his side so that Nicolo has his face tucked into the warm crease of Yusuf’s shoulder. There he is held, shivering, feeling safer than he ever has in his life, until the riders rally and gallop away.

When it is quiet again but for the buzzing of the bugs in the fields and the shifting of the hay Nicolo looks up to Yusuf’s face.

What he sees there is blatantly, truly, unabashedly love, though that's such a small word for what lies in Yusuf’s eyes.

Yusuf leans in and Nicolo has half a thought to go for his knife, to hold it to the thin skin of Yusuf’s throat and demand again like he did two dozen times in Jerusalem “what are you doing to me? How dare you lay claim to my heart when I do not even have control of it?” but he is a civilized man. He was once a priest, he once thought he knew the inner workings of the Lord and what he desired. 

He knows now that God wants him to be happy.

“You look at me like your heart’s breaking,” Nicolo whispers into the scant space between them.

“Oh my Nicolo, my heart is broken every time I look at you,” Yusuf says, his thumb rubbing circles on the apple of Nicolo’s cheek. “But there was never a pain so sweet.”

Nicolo laughs or cries maybe. He leans in so that their lips brush. 

“Always a poet,” he says.

“Only for you _habibi_.” 

And they’re kissing. It’s a hundred years in waiting, maybe they should have done it sooner but Nicolo swears the time has made it sweeter. Nicolo is on _fire._ He’s grinning wide with his teeth bared in rapture when Yusuf takes his mouth to his throat mumbling lovely nothings into the marks he makes there.

He doesn’t know where to put his hands, they flit like songbirds from Yusuf’s jaw to his neck to the heaving sides of his ribs, light and unsure but so very eager. 

He lets out a moan, breathy when Yusuf runs his hand down his stomach to the top of his breeches, his knuckles run unintentionally (or maybe not) over Nicolo’s cock. It scares him, the zap of feeling he feels run up from his groin to his gut warming and cooling his body in equal measure.

He pulls away so that their kisses are broken, his hands framing the sides of Yusuf’s beautiful face.

“I don’t—” he starts. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Yusuf I can’t, I can’t do this—”

“Nico,” Yusuf breathes out. Places his hands over Nicolo’s, leans into the cradled warmth of their joined fingers. “Do you want this, my love? Tell me you don’t and I will stop.”  
  


“No,” he says immediately. “Do not stop.” Nicolo will fall apart if he stops. But he does not know how to deal with going forward. 

“Then let me,” Yusuf says close again enough to kiss. “Let me touch you, and you let me know if I should stop.”

They come into one another again, this time with Nicolo’s arms wrung tight around Yusuf’s shoulders, his hands tangled in that beautiful mop of curls. He tugs on it when Yusuf has his breeches down, pulls Nicolo’s hard cock out into his hand.

“God,” he swears as Yusuf tugs, thumbs at the head. “Yusuf please—” Though who in the world knows what he’s begging for.

“I have you, Nicolo. I have you.” 

Yusuf stops, spits into his hand, and then it’s all slickness and heat, Nicolo chokes on his own tongue, digs his nails into Yusuf’s scalp and nips at Yusuf’s ear. 

He fucks Yusuf’s hand making what he’d think are embarrassing noises if not for the way Yusuf groans when he does. 

Yusuf pulls him even closer so that their foreheads brush and Nicolo can see down to where his cock slides between Yusuf’s fist, obscene and perfect. When he comes it’s with Yusuf’s tongue in his mouth, Yusuf’s hand on his cock, making a mess of the hay, the floor, his hands.

While Nicolo is floating on the high of it all Yusuf pushes himself against the hard warm plane of Nicolo’s pubic bone and ruts, once, twice, three times before he too spills, mouthing Nicolo love ballads onto his bare collar bone.

After a moment Yusuf falls back into the hay bringing Nicolo with him. Breathing heavily, Nicolo rests his head on the hard plane of Yusuf’s chest, a better place to rest his head than anywhere else.

Yusuf’s running a gentle hand down his back, light butterfly caresses that tempt Nicolo back into the realm of sleep. 

But he must say this before he goes.

He props his head up onto his head so that he can meet Yusuf eye to eye. 

“I love you,” he says. “There is nothing in the world that I would not give you would you ask. Nothing I would not do for you, Yusuf.”

It’s all been said before between them, but not with words. To say it out loud is almost a disturbance, but from the way Yusuf’s eyes glitter in the dark with unshed tears Nicolo is glad he’s said it. Glad that the wind and the air know now too, that Nicolo di Genova and Yusuf al-Kaysani are more than lovers, but tethered by God to be something beyond.

“Nicolo,” Yusuf says with the weight of a century on his tongue. “There is nothing in the world that I would ask for but you.”

He rises and so does Nicolo. They meet in a kiss unlike their previous, soft but full, reaffirmed. 

_Hello, lover. Hello, my heart. I’ve waited for you._

They kiss and kiss, and when the dawn comes they finally sleep.

  
  


**SOMEWHERE IN THE MONGOLIAN STEPPES 1227**

  
  


The life of nomads Nicolo thinks he could get used to.

There are fewer restrictions among them than in Europe, in Africa, in all the structured, rigid cities of the West, built upon millennia of walls to keep people complacent, to keep people in.

Out in the wild, there is no time to be idle. Here your senses are tenfold what they are in the screaming squall of Venice or Tripoli or London or Damascus. On the plains, the wind is an extension of your eyes and your ears. It pushes at the hindquarters of your horse, guides the path of your arrow to the eye of your enemy who aims to do the same.

And should you survive the galloping, the whoosh of wind between sword and grass, you are gifted the stars spread across the steppes where you may lay and sleep under them, your companion, your lover next to you.

Nicolo is loath to admit that they did not discover this lifestyle themselves. This honor goes to Andromache and Quynh who show up one day at Nicolo and Yusuf’s temporary lodging, in a town by the Black Sea, with their bows drawn and shoot them both in the foot.

Yusuf is faster and has a knife in Quynh’s eye before he can even fall over, and by the time they’ve all maimed one another a little, it’s been established that they are the same. And for Yusuf and Nicolo that there are _others._

Nicolo was perfectly content to spend his eternity with Yusuf, it had taken him a hundred years to fully accept that, but he would be lying if he said he did not wonder if they were truly alone. These women have haunted their dreams in swirls of shadow, the flash of a spear, wind-tousled black hair, for many years. And it’s strange but wonderful to be among them. To be fully who they are.

Andromache is hard as marble, beautiful as a carved statuette. When she tells them she has been alive for long before Christ, by a good four thousand years, Nicolo has to sit down for a while. And Quynh is only a millennia or so younger. 

Where Andromache lives in spells of cold biting fury and dry caustic humor, Quynh is all flashes of anger and lust and excitement. It does not take long for Nicolo and Yusuf to realize that the two are lovers, though they temper each other, opposites where Nicolo and Yusuf are more like the smooth click of a sword and a sheath come together.

Together they ride into Asia, away from Europe and all of its misgivings. Here they will spend many many years. From the steppes of Mongolia to the storm fueled jungles of India, China, and its many warring, rising, falling states, the terraced rice farms it spread to Japan whose samurai fight like wraiths in the mists of the high mountains. 

But those first years are spent with the horse lords, the rising power of what will become Ghenghis Khan and his mighty horde, a swarm of locusts swallowing up the continent, who are feared and revered both. 

For the Mongols’ infamous reputation Nicolo finds his time with them, the band of warriors Andromache has somehow put herself in charge of, some of the happiest in his life. 

The Mongols care not for restrictions on the matter of sex so long as a man married and had sons. In the battlefield and camps, it was not frowned upon to make your friend your lover, to make your many friends your lovers. 

The women too had more power than Nicolo has seen in most places. Managing the count of the herds, orchestrating the chores of the household, counting the wears with a speed and efficiency many men in Europe could only hope to accomplish.

So when Andromache brought their little band to rest for the day, spread out under the bright black-purple of the night sky with nothing but a campfire and their horses to seek shelter under, things were looser, so to speak.

One of the commanders who reports to Andromache comes over, howling and chortling about something or another. He speaks with Andromache for a long minute, then heaves what looks like a large waterskin into her arms. He whistles playfully at them as he leaves, back to his brothers, his own fire.

“What is that?” Yusuf asks, pointing to the bag.

_“Airag,”_ Andromache says, dropping down beside Quynh and twisting off the end of the bag. Quynh leans over to sniff at it and makes a choked noise in the throat. 

“He gave you a fresher brew then huh?” she says.

Andromache smirks. “Oh yes, it won’t take us very long.”

“Uh, again. What is that?” goes Yusuf.

“Mare’s milk Yusuf,” Quynh says. “Fermented. I’ve never been more drunk in my life than on this shit.”

“Mare’s milk?” says Nicolo. He’s heard of it in passing, he’s sure that Yusuf may have drunk it before with the Fatmid’s armies in the crusades. But he never imagined it was something to get drunk off of.

Andromache holds it up and takes a gulp, then holds it over Quynh’s mouth who chokes because Andromache won’t move it. Quynh screeches, her face covered in the stuff, staining her tunic a thick white, and shoves Andromache away cursing at her in Vietnamese. Andromache's laughing, even when Quynh shoves her onto the muddy grass.

“Here,” Andromache says, holding out the drink to Nicolo. 

He takes it, albeit hesitantly, and takes as big a sip as he thinks he can manage without spitting it back up.

He has to cough as it goes down, Yusuf pats him hard between the shoulder blades, and he sticks his tongue out, panting, once he’s swallowed.

“Christ,” he splutters. It was _strong._ He suddenly remembers being young, fifteen, fourteen, chugging the good lemon liquor his father kept stashed in the cellar, hidden behind all the cheap wine. He was so drunk he’d been in bed for three days. He thinks with this he might be out for a week. “How are you not drunk already?” 

Andromache shrugs. “I’ve been drinking for longer than you’ve drawn breath.”

She raises the bag at Yusuf in a silent question, but he shakes his head. For Andromache, it is still strange to her that Yusuf keeps halal, that Nicolo will say a brief prayer over the bodies of the fallen. Someone who’s lived so long before the invention of these gods, and has seen the demise of so many more can never really understand their dedication, especially concerning alcohol. But she does not hold it against Nicolo or Yusuf, and in a year or so she’ll stop asking about the liquor. 

Tonight, Nicolo drinks with her, with Quynh and it doesn’t take long for him to be drunk. Nicolo dances around the fire with a giggling Quynh in his arms while Andromache bawds out some centuries-old soldier’s shanty. Yusuf who’s laughing so hard he’s curled over on the ground claps a steady beat for them 

They spend hours drinking, dancing, falling, throwing things, they are at the hollow of their natures. For once there is no war, no coming battle, no looming eternity stretched out before them like a curse, like a blessing. 

“Easy _tesoro,”_ Yusuf says, who's basically holding Nicolo upright at this point. Out in a human-shaped patch in the grass, Andromache and Quynh are passed out from when they’d been kissing and grinding with one another earlier. They snore like water buffalos. 

“Yusuf,” Nicolo says, nosing at the man's cheek. “Hello, Yusuf.”

“Hello, Nicolo.” He’s laughing, though Nicolo’s too drunk to figure out why all he cares for is his lover’s embrace. Safe. Warm. It feels like the center of the world, and only he gets to see it, feel the beauty for himself. 

“Don’t you think it’s time to sleep, darling?” 

“As long as it's with you,” Nicolo says with a wet and enthusiastic kiss plopped onto Yusuf’s cheek.

“Oh well, I was actually going to lay with those handsome riders over there. A shame, how do I decide?” 

Nicolo gasps dramatically. “You would leave me for a man that smells like a horse!”

“Yes I’m afraid,” Yusuf hums. “I’m absolutely taken with him and his musty smell. It looks like you are on your own my Nicolo.”

Nicolo squeezes tight as he can, laughs when Yusuf squeezes back. They sway in a circle around the campfire, giggling like fools.

“But how will you go to him? I will never let you go,” Nicolo says.

“Never?”

Nicolo leans forward until their noses are brushing. And more seriously than he has been all night says, “Never.”

“Okay,” Yusuf whispers and kisses the tip of his nose. Together they stumble onto their bedroll. Nicolo’s arms and legs spread wide like a starfish, snoring before Yusuf can even make himself comfortable. Yusuf fits himself so that when he falls asleep, his head rests on Nicolo’s chest, he is lulled to his dreams by the rhythm of Nicolo’s breathing.

Waking early the next morning Nicolo has a crick in his neck and his mouth tastes like rotten meat, but he’s slept well, fully. He wakes with an eyeful of Yusuf in a slack sleep, the earth and sky but a painting of pastels above them. Still on the edge of a dream, his eyes heavy, he keeps his position and studies the face of his lover until he wakes. Only then does he move, and it’s a smile.

  
  


**CONSTANTINOPLE 1347**

  
  


Everyone is dying.

Nicolo has been to war more times than he can count. Has seen men speared and slashed open and cut apart and maimed until not even their mother would recognize their face. Some of those times he was one of those men.

But this… this is worse.

Nicolo leans up against the outside wall of the manor house in Constantinople and tries not to cry.

He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes but it does not stop them from aching. He is so tired. So very tired. But he is the only one left standing.

The streets of Constantinople are empty but for gravediggers. They carry bodies out of houses by the dozens, thick swatches of cloth wrapped around their faces. And most of the time just beyond the doorway there is some screaming, wailing, and occasionally someone hobbles to the door to do it. The strongest of the house comes to sob at the door as another, another, another family member is taken by plague.

They do not know what it is. Only that the Tartars carried it to the eastern seas sometime in the 1340s and then the Genoese, oh the Genoese, brought it here on their ships. The Italians have always been so proud of their trade, of their wealth. Nicolo was not proud now. 

Whatever it is that they’ve brought leaves bulbous pus-filled lesions on the body, staining sheets a shit yellow, when they’re not covered with the blood and bile that comes from the endless hacking. Nicolo has spent the past three months cleaning and washing bed sheets, cleaning crimson-colored vomit off the floor, running cold water over the heads, and into the mouths of those afflicted.

He sighs, rubs his hands down his face, careful not to dislodge the cloth around his mouth and nose. He gathers himself and climbs the steps to the manor where the maid, Kleio, flitters about the foyer trembling like a leaf.

“Master Nicolo,” she says frantically in Greek, running over to grab his arm. “Please, come quickly, the mistress she will not lay down, she’s come down the stairs and I cannot get her to—”

“Please Kleio.” He holds up a hand and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I will deal with Andromache but stop talking. I have a headache that would kill a horse.”

She pauses, a whistling whine coming out of her throat. She collects herself, though her eyes hold a new kind of grief, a new kind of fear, and then tentatively she says, “Are you sure you’re alright master Nicolo? If your head is bothering you then perhaps you might lay down for a while, and enjoy the air while you can.”

“If I have the disease Kleio then I will be dead in two days, it would be better to put my time to good use while I can still stand,” he snaps and storms away.

There is a part of him that roils in guilt, for what he’s said. Kleio is a kind girl and does not deserve the brunt of his frustration. She is very flighty, but dedicated to the house and did as she was told.

The manor in which she works and they live is one of Andromache’s many many long-held estates across the world. It’s old, probably old as the city itself, set in one of the richer quarters of Constantinople complete with Greek columns and open-aired hallways, a lovely green courtyard and lily pool to stroll through on the milder days. 

Only most people can do little more than sit up these days.

He reaches the stairs that lead to the second floor and finds Andromache dead, slumped down on the landing, blood and foam pooling about her mouth onto the marble. 

He groans, dragging her into a sitting position and sits and waits for her to come back.

Slowly, the blisters on her face heal. Her skin becomes unblemished, her face retains a healthy pinkish color, her eyes unglaze and she blinks, once, twice, before settling on Nicolo.

She says nothing.

Fine then. “So what exactly did you plan on doing once you stumbled down here?”

Andromache coughs, wipes away the blood at the corner of her mouth with her arm.

“I don’t know. Something.”

At least she’s honest, Nicolo will give her that.

“There’s nothing for you to do but fall sick again. You know this Andromache,” he says.

“Don’t lecture me,” she grunts. “I’ve seen plague before I know how this fucking works. I should be done with dying by now.”

“See, but you’re not.” Nicolo walks over and pulls her up by the arm. “You should have been well weeks ago. Quynh and Yusuf too. This plague is different. You do not know this kind of death Andromache. You are not all-knowing.”

“Oh and you are?” she sneers.

“No, but I am not sick.”

It bothers him. Not once has he fallen ill with this horrible disease. He’s spent more than enough nights in sick rooms with the inflicted, draining their lesions, wiping their filth. He’s had his gentle hands all over Yusuf, who does nothing more but moan and writhe and beg for relief in bed with a fever. 

He _should_ be sick. But he’s not, and sometimes he thinks it's worse to watch the city, the world crumbling, while you remain sturdy and unbreakable. 

He puts himself to work, to help, trying not to dwell on it. 

“Your stubbornness will not help you here Andromache, there is no escape from this. Only patience. You must die again, and come back, and pray that God lets you live this time,” he says.

“God is a sadistic fuck.”

Nicolo sighs, but agrees, “Yes, sometimes He is.”

They walk upstairs together, Andromache looks relieved to be walking again and takes long almost dance-like strides. She enjoys it while she can before she is struck down again with another round of hell. Nicolo does not blame her.

Coming into their room is like stepping into something damp and foul, the very air is rancid. The window is open, the curtains drawn to let in a breeze, any passing pleasant scent, but it does little. 

Quynh is retching violently into a bucket when they enter, Andromache makes a beeline for her. Brushes the sweaty flyaways off of her forehead, brings her back down into the bed, and whispers things too low for Nicolo to hear. It doesn’t matter anyway, he has eyes only for Yusuf.

Yusuf is curled up in bed, facing the wall, even from a distance, Nicolo can see him shivering. For him, the fever is the worst thing, long sweating spells where he lies in bed panting like a dog, times where no matter how many blankets Nicolo brings him he cries out and weeps with the cold.

“Yusuf,” Nicolo whispers, sliding onto the bed, a gentle hand to his back. “Yusuf are you awake?” 

It takes a moment but he makes a sound, a whiny groan from beneath the coverings. Nicolo peels back the blankets until he can see Yusuf’s face. 

It’s hard to look at. Whatever part of his skin that isn’t covered in boils is red, and flushed dripping in sweat. There’s a lesion of his cheek the size of a cherry, leaking discharge down his face. His eyes are so watery, it looks like he’s been crying for days. But he couldn’t have been. He was dead yesterday.

“Nicolo,” Yusuf croaks. “Is that you Nicolo?”

“Yes yes, it’s me.” He leans down and places a kiss on his forehead, comes back with his lips tingling of salt. “I’m here my love, tell me what do you need?”

“You,” he says. “You please. I’m so cold Nico, come lay with me. Help me please.”

Nicolo can feel his heart cracking open. Could he trade places with Yusuf he would. He would, he would, he would. A thousand times over. He does not know how many more deaths, how much more pleading he can bear to see and hear.

Constantinople has become a city of beggars. The city is known for its hospitality, the multitude of people and religions and creeds who make a home inside its walls. Nicolo does not doubt that many kinds of gods were prayed too daily. It seems that none of them were listening.

He shuffles in behind Yusuf so that his chest is flush with his back. He wraps one arm tight over his side and reaches down wiggling his fingers until Yusuf tangles their hands together.

They breathe for a moment before Yusuf asks, “How many did you bury today Nicolo?”

He asks it every day. Nicolo does not know why. But no one would know better than he does. He walks through this city an angel of death. Nicolo knows how painful it is for Yusuf to sit here on the precipice of it, ready again to fall into another purgatory, then back up to the living world to redo it all until his body figures out how to _live._ Maybe this keeps him sane. Counting the days not in sunfalls but in body counts.

But Nicolo cannot tell him.

“I do not know,” he says. “I truly do not know.”

There is no correct way to respond to that, so Yusuf doesn’t. He squeezes Nicolo’s hand, wheezes and together they drift while from the window they can hear the city fall to pieces.

  
  


**SPAIN 1480**

  
  


Every step he takes and his ankle snaps open again.

_Click, snap, click, snap, click, snap._

He’s running on a bum leg, any mortal man would be dead twice over by now. Nicolo was dead not long ago, battered and broken on the floor of his home with his kneecap blown out, and a bone popped out of his foot. Someone had swung a metal mallet at his chest, cracking him open like a crab, and there he had bled out, his ribs shot to pieces on the rug by their bed while they dragged Yusuf out kicking and screaming to be set on fire.

By the time he’d healed enough, thirty seconds too long, Nicolo was hobbling out of their house and into the wheat fields following the many Spanish torchbearers in the distance who hooted and hollered while Yusuf screamed.

He is running so fast his ankle does not have time to heal properly, it knits itself together only to be split open again but he cannot stop. He cannot stop.

Spain for so long has been the bridge between worlds. The south kissed the northern tip of Africa, separated by the thin strip of water that was the Strait of Gibraltar. For centuries so easily was culture and knowledge and peoples exchanged across the water

But this merging, the Christians think is not so pure. It is not an unfamiliar argument. Nicolo has heard it before, he was raised from the dead in it. Funny how the Crusades come back to haunt him, and will continue to do so. 

The Old Guard when it was formed by Andromache was not tasked with stopping the tide of empires. Things come and go, and they must do so as well. What seemed to be the endless clash over land on the Iberian peninsula. Owned by Spain. No, now the Moors. Now the _Caliphate of_ _Córdoba_. Now the Aragons. This was another petty product of humanity as far as Andromache was concerned. It was left be. But Nicolo wanted to help. Yusuf wanted to help. Maybe they could save some people from this war. 

But war was never done in this part of the world. 

Queen Isabella I of Castille, who most of the modern world will come to know as the woman who granted _Cristoforo fucking Colombo_ three Spanish ships to sail for the Indies, only to unfold a centuries-long downpour of disease and genocide atop two whole continents, is a very dedicated woman.

Nicolo almost wishes the rest of the world gave her more credit. She is smart and stubborn and has more balls than most kings have brain cells. But she also is a servant of God. And for the longest time, the more powerful people within the Catholic faith thought that meant having the body of a Muslim, a Jewish man, on the end of your sword was a path straight to the allfather.

Thus, the Spanish Inquisition. 

Isabella’s idea of serving God looks like this, chasing after Yusuf through a wheatfield, where through the tears in his eyes, the rabid fear in his throat, he can see smoke rising in the distance and the closer he gets the more it smells like something’s cooking, the louder the wailing gets.

He has his longsword at his side, he has no armor on, he’s is in his sleepshirt for fuck’s sake, but he’s not stopping. 

He slows before the field thins out, he’s still aware enough not to charge right into the fray of the _Reconquista,_ but by God, he has to clench his teeth to stay still. So many horrors he’s seen in his life and this he knows he will have nightmares of this for centuries to come.

There in the center of the clearing is a hastily drawn up wooden platform with two tall wooden stakes on each end, where on the left three out of the five Muslims belonging to their village who refused to convert, are burning alive.

There’s movement from the right and Nicolo watches two of the Castille soldiers, who’d broken into their house, killing Nicolo and dragging Yusuf away, haul a protesting Yusuf up the platform.

On the other stake, there are the two remaining Muslims in the village, Safiya and Haroun, a newly married couple, Yusuf and Nicolo were at their wedding only a couple of months ago drunk on the love and happiness spread about in the air.

When they see Yusuf being marched up to the stake they start shouting at him in a rapid-fire mishmash of Spanish and Arabic, it's panicked, desperate, Yusuf is both trying his best to calm them down and crush the soldier’s toes beneath his feet.

A man comes from the left side, lighting his torch in the smoldering remains of the previous fire where three bodies lay charred, black-pink and smoldering, the whites of their teeth shining in the ash like demonic little stars. 

When he moves to Yusuf and the couple, the torch casting wicked shadows on his face, that’s when a soldier on the ground finds the tip of a longsword sticking out of his eye. Nicolo has descended upon them quietly and without mercy. 

There’s some shouting but it doesn’t last long. Anyone on the ground Nicolo takes down quickly. He twirls and ducks heaves the sword above his head to meet its mark in the skull of a dimwitted Spaniard. He is ruthlessly efficient. He is not just a man who has wielded a thousand weapons of the world for centuries, he is also just a damn good fighter.

There’s more than one reason why he and Yusuf fought for so long in the battlefield of Crusaders. It’s because they were _good_ at it. 

But he’s not fast enough. He’s pulling his sword out of the gut of a man when he hears the signature whoosh of a flame’s ignition. 

The man’s thrown the torch to the tinder. 

Nicolo moves faster than he ever has in his life. With a dropkick that even Andromache would be proud of he kicks the man into the tinder, then jumps in after him.

He’s chest to chest with Yusuf, Safiya and Haroun tied around to his sides. They’re screaming as the fire works its way up from their feet to their shins, they’re praying in anguished wails, their hands clasped together tight. It’s the most devastating thing Nicolo’s ever heard or seen.

“Push!” he’s screaming at Yusuf while he reaches down into the fire to press at the tied base of the stake. He can’t feel his fingers, in a minute they will be nothing but bone, but he doesn’t _care, he doesn’t care—_

Yusuf groans something mighty, pained, and Nicolo cries out as the skin on his pinky finger burns off, but he’s undone it and when he shoves his shoulder hard at Yusuf’s legs which in turn push at the stake, suddenly the world is an upside-down whoosh of fire.

The platform collapses backward. Nicolo is flung to the muddy ground with the rest of them, the charred body of the torchbearer and when he raises his shaky head out of the dirt he realizes too with a pang, Safiya and Haroun who have burned just enough to die from the pain, the shock of it all.

Yusuf is alive, but barely.

Nicolo sways when he stands, his hands are red-brown with the burns but healing, he reaches down and hauls Yusuf up by the armpits, ignoring his pained groans.

“Come on come on, _Alzati, dobbiamo andare Yusuf. Dobbiamo andare adesso!_ ” he hisses. 

Yusuf doesn’t answer, not in words, he’s coughing up a lung it seems like, the smoke damage no doubt, but he does grab a tight fistful of Nicolo’s shirt and they run off into the brush together.

Behind them, there is a coming mob. He can hear the outraged jabber of more Spanish soldiers coming, growling like they’re on a hunt. There’s the barking of dogs, the sound of rustling leaves as they run deeper and deeper into the forest. 

They brought hounds, they brought more fire, they brought hate and bigotry and Nicolo _will not_ let Yusuf be caught again.

They’re moving faster now, Yusuf still looks a charred mess, covered head to toe in soot and other fleshy bloody things but his wounds have healed, his burns. He reaches a hand out to Nicolo as they run and then they are connected in their footsteps, tearing up the ground, never again to be separated.

Up ahead Nicolo sees the beginning of a large boggy pond, he doesn’t even have to say anything to Yusuf, he knows what they must do. They don’t stop as the water comes closer, the great stench of the decay and dead things trapped in the weeds. Together they dive into the thickness of the water and swim down to the bottom.

They swim for as long as they can without drowning and only when their lungs prickle on the edge of agony do they resurface, keeping just their heads in sight above the water, their watchful eyes trained on the far side of the pond.

They swam far, Nicolo can see nothing but the faint yellow glow of the torches on the other side, hear the whine-howl of the hounds, frustrated, who are stopped by the water. 

He swims to the bank of the pond and collapses onto the ground, shaking.

“Nico, oh Nico.” Yusuf reaches a hand over to cup his cheek. “We’re alright Nicolo, we’re okay.” 

They’re not. They’re a shaking trembling mess of fools who thought they could do some good. Look where they were now, almost dead themselves. A who have they saved? Their village lies in cinders. 

Nicolo does not think he is anything resembling “alright”. But he doesn’t have the words in which to say this, he’s too preoccupied with getting Yusuf under his hands, tingling with freshly regrown skin.

He buries himself in Yusuf’s embrace, sobbing without sound. Even now he knows to be quiet, lest the Spaniards who are no doubt still hunting for them hear it, he runs his hands across every acre, every alley of Yusuf’s body. Presses a million bruising kisses to his lips, receives a million in return.

But they must keep going. 

They walk and run in increments to save their stamina, there is so much distance they have to cover to be free of Spain and the Catholic-dominant swarm creeping over it. They walk through the night and only when they reach the untouched countryside free of any buildings, any towns, _anything_ , do they stop. 

They have nothing to their names but themselves and Nicolo’s longsword.

They make do with that. Yusuf leads him to a rocky outcrop and together they huddle beneath the extension of a ledge tangled with one another. Yusuf flush to his back, Nicolo bare to the world but for Yusuf’s arm around his side. 

This is the first of their many nights in this position. Nicolo refuses to sleep any other way but in front, lest evil’s greedy hands come again to take Yusuf from him in the night. Though he does not know this yet.

Now, all Nicolo does is keep both his hands wrapped around his longsword in his sleep, gripping so hard his hands go white.

  
  


**NEW YORK CITY 1990**

  
  


Nicky has to admit, there is not a woman in the world who looks better in a ballgown than Andromache the Scythian.

Though he knows she’d much prefer to be out of it.

“This is completely impractical,” she says whipping her leg around in the long glittery green number with the long slit.

“It’s not supposed to be practical Andy. It’s fashion,” Nicky says from where he’s sitting on the loveseat sipping champagne.

“Since when have I ever given a flying fuck about fashion?” 

Below her, the tailor holding a measuring tape up to the slender line of her leg makes a huffing noise. He’s a short, willowy wisp of a thing who scowls up a storm anytime Andy so much as shuffles a hair out of place.

Booker’s sitting in some ornate black and white armchair, snickering into his whiskey and doesn’t even stop when Andy shoots a glare his way.

“You look good boss,” he says. “That is what matters. We did not come all the way to New York for you to be strutting around in a ballroom in a potato sack.”

“I would settle for some pants.”

New York in 1990 is many things and Nicolo can never account for all of them. He has been alive for almost a thousand years now and been to hundreds of cities. Cities of wealth, cities of prosperity, cities of power, greed, horror, despair. This one manages to checkmark all of the above.

The Old Guard has watched the world slip by into a behemoth of an interconnected beast. A world built on electricity and gunfire. Cities of great size are no stranger to them, Manhattan has the same heavy weight of Rome or Cairo or Babylon, only it carries with it buildings of black glass and ten times the inhabitants than the Roman capital had at its peak.

So many kinds of people too. No one in New York City was American Nicky thinks. They are Nigerian and Puerto Rican and Irish and Lebanese. Ten thousand different places and names. Nicky can walk down the street and listen in on ten different conversations, be exempt from ten more. 

All this diversity and brainpower, New York was an empire of its own. It’s a palace on an island swindled for twenty-five dollars, it’s lords and ladies, it’s fiefdom spread across Long Island to the mouth of the Hudson to the suburban upstate.

And this makes it easy for corruption to take root. New York breeds success, it also breeds suffering.

There’s a knock at the door, and Joe sticks his head in a hand held over his eyes.

“Are we finished? All dressed?” he says.

Andy snorts. “Yes, come in.” Like they all haven’t seen each other naked before.   
  


The tailor stands as Joe comes in and murmurs something to Andy, probably reminding her of the bill, before he shuffles out.

Joe comes around and plops down onto the empty side of the loveseat pressing a loud kiss to Nicky’s cheek.

“I bring gifts!” he says. In his hands are three heavy-looking garment bags. He passes one to Nicky and one to Booker.

Nicky unzips his bag to a striking velvety crimson-colored tux. Across the room, Booker holds up one in a lovely gray with an icy blue bowtie.

“Oh you get pants but I don't?” Andy complains her arms spread wide.

“Hush, you look spectacular,” Joe says. “And we all know you can fit a knife or two in there somewhere.”

“Murder at the _soiree_ , how wonderful,” Nicky says it’s teasing but there’s a hard edge in his voice.

Many suffer in New York City. The 1990s is made of more than that boppy teenage music Nicky hears and loathes on the radio. It’s the AIDS crisis, it’s more beds filled in hospitals than can be managed. It’s drugs funneled into the areas of the poor, blocked off streets filled wall to wall with drug lords and overdoses. The police running rampant, their knees flush to the necks of those less fortunate, for daring to have dark skin. 

There is a man who works on the city council, who has the drug-runners from Mexico in his pocket, gets them off the ships at the Red Hook Harbor, the Port Authority across the river in New Jersey. Who makes sure they get to the Bronx, Newark, and Harlem.

This man will be at this ball to which Booker has so graciously gotten them all tickets.

It’s time that he’s had a talking to.

But first, they were to acquire Andy’s dress, and Joe somehow has whipped up these handsome and expensive-looking tuxedos. Now that everything they need is in hand they have the rest of tonight free. No doubt Andy will want to go over their plan a couple more times before tomorrow comes, but Nicky intends to enjoy his evening before things start spinning out of control as they are bound to. 

“Alright,” Joe says. “Booker go and try that on. Andy take yours off, you look on the edge of a heart attack. I hope your game face tomorrow night is much more pleasant.”

Andy flips him off but steps happily off the block in front of the mirror and into the dressing room with Booker into the one at her side.

“And what about me?” Nicky asks. “You don’t want to see me in a tuxedo?”

“Oh I do,” Joe whispers, taking Nicky’s chin between his hands and pulls him in. He kisses the hinge of his jaw, the high ridge of his cheekbone until he reaches Nicky’s ear. “But I would much prefer to see you out of it.”

Nicky swats him away playfully. “I have not even tried it on yet, and we are in a _garment shop_ in case you haven’t noticed.”

“What? I can multitask. I bring you beautiful clothes and start up the foreplay at the same time. I am a man of many talents.”

“You are a thousand years old,” Nicky says drawing Joe in for a toothy kiss, he’s smiling so wide. “I would hope you have learned more than a few things by now.”

Joe makes a sound of protest, no doubt he has some mischievously scathing quip ready to fire, but he falls into the soft brush of Nicky’s lips, the trick his tongue, humming in satisfaction.

“Jesus Christ,” says Booker and they break apart. “We’ve been gone for two minutes and you two are already at it.”

“Please,” Andy says, walking by him with the dress in its garment bag, snatching one of the brightly colored candies off the end table and popping it into her mouth. “Like you have not seen them in more compromising positions.”

Booker sighs when they break out into laughter. “That is fair.”

They are back in their hotel by dinnertime, where they all order an outrageous amount of room service and lounge around in the living room of their connecting bedrooms watching cheesy sitcoms.

Andy retires early, and Booker about an hour later after drinking and arguing with Joe about the absolute sacrilege that is American “football”. 

Nicky is not tired yet, instead, he rests on the balcony, his arms crossed against the railing as he looks out at the city, it’s never-ending noise and light.

Joe comes behind him wrapping his arms around his waist and presses his nose into the juncture of Nicky’s neck with a satisfied hum.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” Nicky says gesturing to the great metropolis of metal and ruckus spread out before them.

“It is different,” Yusuf says. “Not bad, but I prefer the older places. They are easier to navigate.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re old.”

Joe squawks. “I am not! Maybe I appreciate the architecture more. Not all this flashiness and steel.” He nips playfully at Nicky’s neck. “And if I am old then you are in the same boat, Nicolo.”

“I never said otherwise.” He turns in Joe’s arms. Strokes a hand down the fluffiness of his beard. That handsome face he sees every morning. He thanks God for it every day. Every second if he could. He thinks he doesn’t deserve Yusuf some days, but then he sees how the man looks at him like the sun rises in Nicolo’s eyes, and thinks—

_We deserve to have each other._

“I have not seen your suit you know,” Nicky says.

“That’s because it's a surprise. I have to keep you on your toes no? Romance you every day.”

Nicky twirls one of Joe’s curls around his finger, watches it spring out of his hold. “Oh well, you’re very good at that.”

“I’ve had years of practice,” Joe says. 

They stay out on the balcony for far longer than they intend, whispering declarations of love into each other's mouths on one of the long chairs put out there by the hotel. In the morning when Andy knocks on their door and receives no answer she sneaks in to find them not in bed but outside. Joe spread out wide on the chair, Nicky snug to his side facing the door, not a part of them disconnected, not a part of them bothered by it, or willing to be separated.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations! (By google translate, if they're wrong and you speak Italian let me know!)
> 
>  _Dio, perdonami, ti prego, perdonami, ho rinunciato al tuo dono, ho lasciato che lo prendessero_ : God forgive me please forgive me, I gave up your gift I let them take him
> 
>  _Alzati, dobbiamo andare Yusuf. Dobbiamo andare adesso!_ : Stand up, we have to go Yusuf. We have to go right now!
> 
> Come hang with me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)! And send me any ideas or prompts you might have about Joe and Nicky, I'm in need of some inspiration :p
> 
> Comments and kudos, as always, are loved and feed the beast :)


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